A project launched by the elementary school counselors plans to restructure the whole recess experience for students in which they can do different activities that are not done outside.

Elementary grades 2 to 5 will have a new game room in the coming weeks. Here they can play board games, hang out, meet new people and try to lower the impact of social anxiety in kids 

“We can see in various examples around other places that have these types of areas for students, that they can bring great increases in things like happiness, connectivity and a decrease in social anxiety,” Juliana Sarmiento, 4th-5th Counselor, said.

According to students in upper elementary, they believe this room is a necessity and that it would help some in their individual situations.

“Some kids in elementary don’t like to go outside [in addition] to them not liking to go out, is the fact that they are always pressured to go play soccer, which they either don’t like or think that they are too loud,” Sarmiento said.

Positive effects are expected to come out as a result of this project. Students from different grades or from their own grades will connect with each other, which is one of the counselor’s goals. 

“There is not much contact between some students inside their own grades, much less with the smaller or bigger kids, so we hope that with this solution we can at least try to fix the rift between grades and between individual people,” Sarmiento said.

The new room will include board games, cards, toys, internet connectivity, technology for learning, and books. Counselors will supervise the first phases of the project. “For the students, by the students” is the motto that the counselors have put forth this project.

“We are not supervising once the project is well developed, because we want the students to feel like the place is theirs, to make them feel that they can come in and relax or chill in an area that would be managed by them, as the people who would actually be running the place would be a student committee that is comprised of students from 2o & 5o grade,” Sarmiento said.

Support is strong within the students, counselors and the administration, nevertheless there are various problems that slow down progress. According to Sarmiento “Meetings & bureaucracy are the things slowing us down” it comes to various people’s surprise because the administration pushed all their support onto the project.

“Conflicting interests of who is gonna be in charge of the project plus the funding and costs of actually building the space is what is actually preventing us [the counselors] from going forward with the project,” Sarmiento said.

The game room is expected to be finished with all the pertaining assets by around the 10th of December and will be opened in January when the students come back.

“All in all, we think that it will be a very [advantageous] area for everyone who uses it, it’s gonna be an opportunity for the kids to meet new friends and make new experiences, it will be great,” Sarmiento said.